A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post

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My God! You would have thought that I’d committed a mortal sin. Lights flashed, horns sounded, fists waved. I had to check the back seat to make sure I didn’t have the dreaded Mrs Kilshaw on board.

The last time I glanced at the Highway Code, overtaking was allowed. Wearing a trilby and driving too slowly wasn’t mentioned. Get a life, old man.

Something’s been bothering me about the National Lottery draw, which I heard on the radio the other night.

When the first ball dropped, the crowd went mad. When the second ball dropped, the cheering got louder. By the time the sixth ball dropped, the cheering was so loud that you would have thought that they were watching red-hot pokers being inserted into Peter Mandelson’s toilet parts.

Now this defies all logic. While everyone may start off cheering the first number, and even the second, by the time the last one arrives they’ve got nothing to celebrate but another wasted weekly fiver. There’s only one person in the country still smiling and that’s the winner.

Where do they get these simpletons from? Where do they find people so bereft of brain that they cheer to order just because a man with a clipboard tells them to?

I don’t know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of coaches from Wales are parked outside BBC Television Centre on Lottery nights.

The Evening Post runs two stories on facing pages. The first, that meat supplies are running low as the movement of livestock is banned. The second, that Wendy the elephant will have to be shot if foot and mouth disease affects Bristol Zoo.

You can see where I’m coming from here, can’t you. Yep, elephant chops. Sometimes life just provides its own solutions.

As does eating your dog when the supermarkets run out of meat. Here, Whittaker, there’s a good boy.

*- BARRY BEELZEBUB
The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this newspaper, of anyone who watched the new Crossroads without laughing, of anyone who hasn’t punched a smug vegetarian this week, or of any Archers listener who thinks for a minute that Kate will send Phoebe back from South Africa.

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